Windows 11 has more AI features than most people realise, and they are not all equal. Some run entirely on your device. Others send everything to Microsoft's servers in the cloud. A few do both depending on what you are doing and which hardware you have.
The distinction matters for three reasons: privacy, performance, and reliability. Local features work offline, respond instantly, and never send your data anywhere. Cloud features require internet, introduce network latency, and involve Microsoft processing your input on remote servers.
Here is a clear breakdown of what is actually running where.
What Runs Locally on Copilot Plus PCs
Copilot Plus PCs are Windows 11 devices with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit capable of at least 40 TOPS. The NPU is the hardware that makes local AI possible. Without it, these features either do not work or fall back to slower CPU-based processing.
Live Captions with translation transcribes any audio playing on your PC and can translate it into English in real time from over 40 languages. This runs entirely on the NPU. No audio leaves your device. It works offline and activates within a second of audio starting.
Windows Studio Effects provides background blur, eye contact correction, and portrait lighting for your webcam during video calls. These process your camera feed continuously on the NPU. The video shown to other call participants is processed locally before leaving your device, not on a remote server.
Recall takes periodic screenshots of everything on your screen and makes them searchable using natural language. When this feature is active, all processing happens locally on the NPU. The screenshot data stays on your device and is not sent to Microsoft. You can search your own history with queries like "that spreadsheet with the quarterly figures" and Recall finds it locally.
Cocreator in Paint generates and edits images from text descriptions using the NPU. When you describe what you want and the image appears within seconds, that generation happened on your device. No image data travels to a server and the feature works without internet.
Restyle in Photos applies AI artistic styles to your photos locally. Select a photo, choose a style, and the transformation runs on the NPU in seconds without any upload.
Writing Assistance in Windows 11, which offers rewriting and proofreading suggestions in supported text fields, runs locally on Copilot Plus PCs using on-device models. Microsoft explicitly confirmed this works offline for Copilot Plus users.
What Runs in the Cloud
Microsoft Copilot is the most prominent AI feature in Windows and it is almost entirely cloud-based. When you open Copilot and ask a question or request help with a task, your prompt travels to Microsoft's servers, is processed by large language models running in Azure, and the response travels back. This requires an internet connection. Without one, Copilot does not work.
The Copilot panel in Windows connects to the same cloud infrastructure as Copilot on the web. The difference from a dedicated browser tab is mainly the tighter integration with Windows settings and actions.
Copilot Voice, which lets you say Hey Copilot and have a spoken conversation with the assistant, also routes through Microsoft's cloud for the language understanding and response generation, even though the initial wake word detection may happen locally.
Bing-powered features including search suggestions, AI-generated search summaries in Microsoft Edge, and the intelligent answers in Windows Search that draw on web content all require internet connectivity and process on Microsoft's servers.
Image generation through Copilot using Microsoft's Designer integration and Bing Image Creator sends your text prompt to Microsoft's servers where the image is generated and returned. This is different from Cocreator in Paint, which runs locally.
Microsoft 365 Copilot features including email drafting suggestions in Outlook, meeting summaries in Teams, and document assistance in Word all route through Microsoft's cloud infrastructure and require an active Microsoft 365 subscription with Copilot enabled.
What Works in Both Modes
Some features operate differently depending on whether you have a Copilot Plus PC and whether you are connected.
Windows Search uses local indexing by default, finding files and apps on your device without internet. Copilot Plus PCs gain an enhanced semantic search capability powered by Recall's local index, which understands natural language queries about content you have previously seen. This local search enhancement does not require internet. The web results that sometimes appear in Windows Search, however, do.
Accessibility features like the standard Live Captions in English run locally on any Windows 11 PC. The translation capability that converts other languages into English requires the Copilot Plus NPU to run locally. On non-Copilot Plus PCs, translation may fall back to a cloud-assisted mode depending on the Windows version.
Why the Distinction Matters
For everyday users the practical implications are straightforward.
Features that run locally are private by architecture, not just by policy. Recall processing your screen content on your device means Microsoft cannot access that content even if they wanted to. Live Captions processing audio locally means whatever you are listening to never reaches a third-party server. This is a structural privacy guarantee rather than a policy promise.
Features that run in the cloud are limited by your internet connection. If your connection is slow, Copilot responses are slow. If your connection drops, Copilot stops working entirely. The cloud features are also subject to Microsoft's data retention and usage policies, which is worth understanding if you regularly share sensitive information with Copilot.
Battery life is affected differently by each type. Local NPU processing is more power-efficient than the equivalent CPU or GPU computation, and significantly more efficient than the round trips involved in cloud processing. A laptop using Live Captions locally consumes noticeably less power than one running a continuous cloud service.
How to Tell Which Mode a Feature Is Using
Windows does not always make this obvious, but there are reliable signals.
Features that work without Wi-Fi are running locally. If you enable Airplane Mode and a feature continues to function, it is processing on device. If it stops or shows a connectivity error, it depends on the cloud.
Features exclusive to Copilot Plus PCs are almost always running locally on the NPU. Microsoft built that hardware requirement specifically because those features need the NPU to function efficiently without internet.
Features available on any Windows 11 PC with internet are cloud-based. Copilot, Bing integration, and Microsoft 365 AI features work on any PC and require connectivity because they rely on Microsoft's server infrastructure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do local AI features in Windows work during a power outage when my internet is down?
Yes. Features that run on the NPU, including Live Captions, Windows Studio Effects, Recall, and Cocreator in Paint, work without internet. Your device processes everything independently. The cloud-based features, primarily Copilot and anything requiring Microsoft's servers, stop working when internet is unavailable.
Does Microsoft store data from local AI features like Recall?
Recall data stays on your device and is not sent to Microsoft. Microsoft has been explicit that Recall processing happens locally and the screenshot data remains on the PC. You can view, manage, and delete Recall data through the Recall settings. Cloud features like Copilot do have data retention policies, and conversations may be stored for a period depending on your account settings and whether you have chat history enabled.
Can I use the local AI features if I have a non-Copilot Plus Windows 11 PC?
Some features will work using CPU-based processing, but more slowly and with higher battery consumption. The Copilot Plus designation specifically means the NPU is powerful enough to run these features efficiently. On standard Windows 11 PCs without a qualifying NPU, features like Cocreator and Recall may be unavailable entirely, and others may run but with noticeably slower performance.
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